1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
To reduce the risk of leaking printed information, there exists a host, server, and image forming apparatus with an authentication function that compares authentication information attached to a print data with authentication information input by a user and does not allow the print data to be printed unless both authentication information corresponds to each other. For example, an image forming apparatus with such an authentication function is disclosed in Japanese Un-examined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-62231.
Specifically, Japanese Un-examined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-62231 discloses an image forming apparatus capable of protecting the usage of functions of the image forming apparatus and the print data stored in the image forming apparatus by employing different authentication methods depending on the importance degree of the functions provided with the image forming apparatus and the data stored in the image forming apparatus.
However, the image forming apparatus described above temporarily stores the print data in the image forming apparatus until a user is authenticated, and thus, in a case such as where the user forgets to print out the print data or where the image forming apparatus itself is stolen, the print data is left stored in the image forming apparatus to result in a problem that the print data is leaked.